Pros
The company culture is good. It's a very friendly relaxed environment and as most people are academics they encourage knowledge sharing. There is no real pressure to meet deadlines and if you are in the right place at the right time, the work can be very interesting.
Cons
The pay for engineers is terrible. Especially given the specialism and amount of knowledge required. Loyalty is not rewarded and they continually hire people with inappropriate backgrounds on 5k more than experienced engineers. It's hard to swallow. The HR department is running the company which is extremely unusual. There used to be a performance related pay review but this is now a flat 2% raise overall which is disgraceful given the company's financials. The lack of PPR means that there is an awful lot of "deadwood" in the company coasting along on other peoples work.